Last March, in the wake of the killings in Toulouse, large numbers of French Muslims took part in interfaith demonstrations.

Earlier this week, Israeli Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli
Edelstein unveiled a report on worldwide anti-Semitism which shows an alarming
rise in anti-Jewish incidents during 2012, including violent attacks on Jews by
Muslims.

The study, released in conjunction with International Holocaust
Remembrance Day, found an increasing number of attacks on Jews and Jewish
institutions worldwide – many of which were carried out by adherents of groups
identifying with extremist Islamist ideology or with the radical
Right.

The report came alongside the printing of the deeply disturbing
cartoon in the London Sunday Times depicting Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
in manner all too reminiscent of the blood libels we had hoped were a thing of
the past.

These developments are only the latest to highlight an ominous
trend toward greater violence and hatred directed against Jews in Diaspora
communities. Recent reports reveal that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in
2012 was 45 percent higher than the previous year. A separate report in October
of 2012 showed that France had the most hate crimes against Jews in 2011 with
114, followed by the United Kingdom with 105, Canada with 68 and Australia with
30.

The most horrific of the attacks highlighted in the 2012 report
released by Edelstein took place in Toulouse, France last March, in which a
23-year-old French Muslim named Mohammed Merah opened fire at a Jewish day
school, killing three schoolchildren and a rabbi.

THE TREND of a rise in
violent attacks on Jews by Muslims in Europe and around the world is deeply
disturbing, and must not be ignored in the supposed interest of bettering
Muslim-Jewish relations.

Yet even while vowing to do everything within
our power to prevent such attacks, we should not overlook the fact that there
has been a countervailing trend of great significance.

In an
ever-increasing number of countries, especially in Europe and North America,
Muslim leaders have been speaking out against anti- Semitic attacks by Muslims
and vowing to stand together with their Jewish counterparts in opposing
anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

The willingness of European Muslim
leaders to speak out publicly against violent anti-Semitic attacks carried out
by their co-religionists began in the United Kingdom in January 2009, when in
the wake of an upsurge of attacks on Jews by Muslims during the Israel-Gaza war
of that year, more than 20 prominent British Muslims, including some of the UK’s
leading theologians, imams, writers and community activists signed a joint
letter denouncing anti-Semitic attacks and called for continued Muslim vigilance
against anti-Semitism.

Last March, in the wake of the killings in
Toulouse, large numbers of French Muslims took part in interfaith demonstrations
and candlelight vigils in Paris, Marseilles, Nice, Lyon, Strasbourg, Grenoble,
Bordeaux, Dijon, Lille and other cities to denounce Merah’s evil
act.

Major French Muslim organizations, including the French Council of
the Muslim Faith and the Great Mosque of Paris strongly condemned the attack as
being antithetical to the fundamental precepts of Islam.

Indeed, the
willingness of Muslim leaders in European countries to forcefully denounce
attacks on Jews has gone hand in hand with a corresponding decision by many of
the same leaders to form trans- Europe alliances with the Jewish community to
stand together against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia and to oppose legislative
and legal initiatives in Germany, Netherlands and other countries to prevent
Jews and Muslims from practicing rituals basic to both faiths, including male
circumcision and ritual slaughtering.

One of the most important
manifestations of this trend has been the Gathering of European Muslim and
Jewish Leaders, which has held two conferences, in Brussels in 2010 and Paris in
2012; each attended by more than 70 Muslim and Jewish leaders from countries
across the Continent.

As in the United States and Canada, increasing
numbers of European Muslim leaders have made visits together with Jewish
counterparts to former Nazi death camps like Auschwitz; where they have made
strong statements against Holocaust denial; particularly by representatives of
Iran, Hamas and others within the Muslim world. In a compelling gesture of
reconciliation, 15 French Muslim leaders followed the lead of 10 American Muslim
leaders in sending an open letter to the chairman of Hamas, Khaled Mashal,
urging that Israeli prisoner of war Gilad Schalit, who had been held as a
prisoner by Hamas for more than five years, should be released on humanitarian
grounds. Schalit was released just over a month after the letters were
dispatched.

In short, while the growing number and growing violence of
anti-Semitic attacks in Europe and around the world is a deeply troubling
phenomenon that must be exposed and combated, let us not overlook the increased
willingness of Muslim leaders to denounce attacks on Jews and to stand with
Jewish leaders against religious bigotry. In fact, ongoing efforts to strengthen
Muslim-Jewish relations in Europe and around the world play an indispensable
role in overall efforts to protect the security and well-being of Jews in
countries with large and growing Muslim populations.

The writer is
president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding. He is co-authoring a book
entitled Sons of Abraham with Imam Shamsi Ali, the spiritual leader of the
Jamaica Muslim Center, New York City’s largest mosque, which will be published
this September by Beacon Press.